of St. Benedict in 1474, already given.
And if she did not ask others for prayers for herself in her own lifetime, her own prayers for others were evidently rare, were apparently always concerned with their spiritual welfare, and were generally produced only under some special interior impulsion. Hence when asked, in 1496 or later, by Vernazza, in the name of several of her spiritual children, to pray that God might grant them “some little drops of His Love,” she answers that “for these I cannot ask anything from this tender Love; I can but present them in His presence.” This is, no doubt, because she sees them to be already full of the love of God. Whereas in 1495 the poor working man, Marco del Sale, is dying of a cancer in the face, and is in a state of wild impatience: so she prays most fervently for him. It is true that the Vita adds that she did so, “having had an interior movement to this effect. For she never could turn to pray for a particular object, unless she had first felt herself called interiorly by her Love.” Still, this did not prevent her, in 1497, from praying most fervently for patience for her husband, (who was dying from a painful complaint,) simply “because she feared that he might lose his soul,” and without any other more peculiar incentive than this.[78]
2. The rich variety of her life.
Evidently here again, as with the Confessions and Indulgences, her life and practice were indefinitely varied and spontaneous, and incomparably richer than the preconceptions and logic of at least some of her biographers will admit, or indeed than many of her own fervent sayings, so vividly expressive of certain moments or sides of her career or character, suggest or even seem to leave possible. But the underlying meaning and ultimate harmonization of these apparent inconsistencies between her doctrine and her practice, we can only gradually hope to find.
CHAPTER IV
CATHERINE’S LIFE FROM 1473 TO 1506 AND ITS MAIN CHANGES AND GROWTH
Let us now attempt, as far as the often scanty and obscure evidence permits, to give, in the following two chapters, some general account of the changes and growth observable in her external surroundings, her human intercourse and social occupation, her physical health and psychical mood, and above all of those inner experiences and spiritual apprehensions of hers which dominated all the rest, during each of the three main periods of her convert life. This general account will, I trust, suggest the main points for our later investigations, and will show at once how largely artificial, though necessary, all such dividing into periods must be, in the case of so deeply unified and diversified an inner life as Catherine’s.
I. First Period of Catherine’s Convert Life: Giuliano’s Bankruptcy and Conversion; their Work among the Poor, March 1473 to May 1477.
1. Giuliano’s affairs. Catherine’s attitude.
The first six months of her first period (this latter we take to have extended from March 1473 to May 1477) were still spent in Giuliano’s Palace of the Via Agnese and in his country mansion at Prà.[79] But all was now swiftly changing, or already greatly changed, both around her and within. Anxiety, hope, grief, consolation—inasmuch as such feelings could still for her cluster around events external to her deepest spiritual life, and could make themselves at all separately felt during this period of profound absorption in her new large life of love and penance—must all have centred in her husband. For Giuliano had by now got his affairs into such disorder as to be unable to keep up his great social position; and by the autumn of 1473 he had sold his mansion at Prà, and had vacated and let his palace in Genoa itself.[80] He was also by now a very sincere convert, in his own manner and degree; and it was no doubt now that he told Catherine, although she can hardly have failed to know already, of the existence of a poor little girl whom, with an apparently ominous indication of weak indulgence on the part of his widowed mother, he had called Tobia.
We shall be able to prove Catherine’s grand magnanimity and true, cordial forgiveness—directly, no doubt only for and at a later period; but the documents will show that she knew all the decisive circumstances long before, and there is no room for doubt that her dispositions had changed or grown as little as had her knowledge.
2. Life in the little house outside the Hospital.
Catherine and Giuliano had now, in the autumn of 1473, moved into a humble little house, in the midst of artisans, mostly dyers, and of the poor of various sorts, close to the Hospital of the Pammatone, even then already a vast Institution. This dwelling is probably identical, as to the site, with the house still standing at the junction of the Via S. Giuseppe with the Via Balilla, and which bears on its front a picture of Saints Catherine Adorna and Camillus of Lellis[81] at the feet of the Madonna. Since the income remaining to them still amounted, up to Giuliano’s death in 1497, to the equivalent of some £1,200 a year,[82] this self-abnegation and humble identification with the lives of the toiling, nameless poor, must have been an act of deliberate choice, and not one of any degree of necessity. It was never suspended or revoked by either of them.
They now agreed together to a life of perpetual continence; and Giuliano became a Tertiary of the Order of St. Francis,[83] amongst those attached to the Hospital-Church of the Santissima Annunciata in Portoria, itself served by Observant Franciscans. Their only little servant-maid, Benedetta Lombarda, was also a Franciscan Tertiary. But Catherine herself now shows, in this matter of the Religious State, an interesting clearing-up of her own special way and form of sanctity. We saw how much the fervent but inexperienced girl of sixteen had been moved and had longed to be an Augustinian nun; and now the sadly experienced wife of twenty-six, even in the midst of her first convert days, and though surrounded at home, in Church, and in the Hospital, by Religious of the popular and expansive type presented by the Franciscans, (a type which her own deep sympathy with, indeed penetration by, the teaching of the great Franciscan Mystic Jacopone da Todi, will show to have been closely akin to her own,) manifests no thought of becoming a Religious, even in the slight degree represented by the Third Order. And up to her death, thirty-seven years later, she never wavers on this point. A highly characteristic scene and declaration illustrative of this attitude of hers will be given further on.
The Hospital of Pammatone had been founded by Bartolommeo Bosco, one of those large-hearted merchant princes of whom Genoa has had not a few, in 1424, in the street of that name; and only quite recently, in 1472, the Friars of the adjoining Church of the Annunciata had agreed to the incorporation of their own infirmary for sick poor with Bosco’s larger institution. Hence Catherine and Giuliano found 130 sick-beds always occupied by patients, and over 100 foundling girls, who were being trained as silk-workers, all ready to their hands and service.[84] Catherine was besides gradually introduced to the poor of the district, by the Donne della Misericordia—ladies devoted to such works of mercy—and betook herself to her tasks with characteristic directness and thoroughness.[85] She must first, and once for all, completely master all squeamishness in this her lowly work. So she betook herself to cleansing their houses from the most disgusting filth; and she would take home with her the garments of the poor, covered with dirt and vermin, and, having cleansed them thoroughly, would herself return them to their owners. And yet nothing unclean was ever found upon herself. She also tended the sick in the Hospital and in their homes, with the most fervent affection, speaking to them of spiritual things and ministering to their bodily wants, and never avoiding any form of disease, however terrible.[86]
II. Catherine and Tommasa Fiesca: their Difference of Character and attrait. Peculiarity of Catherine’s Penitence and Health during this time.
1. Catherine’s penances.
And throughout this first period of four years, her penances were great. She wore a hair-shirt; she never touched either flesh-meat or fruit, whether fresh or dried; she lay at night on thorns. And by nature courteous and affable, she would do great violence to